RIT's Community Hosts National Day on Writing

On Tuesday, October 20, various groups on campus will be hosting events and activities to celebrate the National Day on Writing.

​The day was nationally recognized in 2009, when the Senate passed a resolution agreeing to attribute October 20 to the National Day on Writing. Since then, college campuses across the country (including RIT) have hosted events and activities to show students the importance and prevalence of writing, as well as to celebrate it in all of its forms.

“The National Day on Writing is a day that celebrates writing in all of its forms,” says Rachael Chaffee, the Director of the University Writing Program. “I think that a lot of students are not comfortable writing academically and think that writing is boring and only based on their discipline. This event acknowledges that the writing we do everyday counts as writing. Many students will say that they never write and I’ll ask them ‘Have you text messaged today?’ ‘Have you posted on Facebook?’ They’ll say that doesn’t count, but if that is the writing you do all of the time, don’t you want to be good at that, to communicate effectively in that way?”

Various groups on campus will be hosting events on Tuesday, including the Writing Commons. The Commons will be handing out “iwRITe” stickers and having a guerrilla sticky note activity where they hand out pre-printed “I write because…” sticky notes for students to fill out and leave around campus. NTID will also be hosting events, including a running story where students can continuously add on to a single collaborative story throughout the day and then film themselves explaining their piece of the story in ASL.

Other groups such as the RIT Storytellers, McKenzie Commons and CSTEP, in addition to multiple others, are hosting events throughout the day as well with everything being followed by a party at 4:00 p.m. hosted by the Writing Commons. The party will have food, drinks and a “window write-in” where students will collaboratively fill a window in the Wallace Library with writing. The party will also serve as a place for students to meet and discuss writing with other people. They are encouraging students to write in their native language in order to represent the diversity in both the students and their writing on campus.

“We never stop being writers, no matter which field you’re in. If you’re an engineer, or a writing major, or an art major, writing is so important and comes into play with everything, sometimes in different forms but it’s always there,” says Bezankeng Njinju, a peer writing consultant at the Writing Commons.